Family Life

I knew it was going to be a long drive. Google Maps told me it would be eight and a quarter hours. I wanted to make sure I didn’t arrive too late, so I left just after lunch. Eleven and a half hours later I pulled into my hotel parking lot, bone-weary. In all that time I stopped once for gas and once to get some food at a drive-through.

The big delay happened 50km into my 800km trip. A chemical tanker had a spill on the highway. This chemical must have been so toxic and so corrosive that they had to get earth-moving equipment to completely remove a 400m section of road. By the time I drove past the site, the pavement had been completely stripped, a narrow lane of new pavement had been laid for cars to get through, and diggers were excavating tons of contaminated earth by the side of the road. There were fire engines and police cars in great numbers. The tanker truck sat forlorn in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by containment barriers and wide swaths of empty ground. What a nightmare.

A three-hour delay is not the most auspicious way to start a long drive. But the weather was beautiful the whole way, traffic was light (other than the 15km of backed-up cars and trucks), and I had no problems finding my way despite trying to follow complicated directions in the dark. Debbie and I had discussed whether all of us should go or just me, and boy, I’m glad it was just me!

My hotel room is huge, though I’m not going to get much time in it. It’s well after midnight and I have an 8 o’clock meeting in the morning. That meeting will go till four or five in the afternoon, and then I start my drive home. I have to be back by noon Sunday. It’s a busy weekend. This was easier when I was younger.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 11:02 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.